on computer science and media topics

Month: July 2017

In the first part of this series you learned which behavioral patterns are usually used to influence humans. Those patterns are the basis of a Social Engineering attack and can usually be detected by a trained person. In the second part we will examine much more sophisticated influencing techniques. Those techniques are very tricky to detect and form a higher threat for your brain’s internal firewall.

Introduction

Espionage, or less formally “syping” has become a huge public topic in Summer 2013. Edward Snowden revealed that The American NSA (National Security Agency) and the allied Great Britain GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) are surveilling, storing and examing all network traffic in- and outbound the US and Great Britain. The debate covered the Newspapers front pages over month and subsequently more and more information was unrevealed. The citizens of the various states on the other hand refused on accepting these actions. But not many things changed politically, moreover the secret (and illegal) activities were made legal in public presence in countries such as the US, Great Britain and Germany. Reminding of George Orwells’ novel “1984”. Still though, things changed in digital communication such as more attempts and request of encryption of messages and data.

Humans can be regarded as one of the biggest weaknesses for secure systems. Their interaction with technology and awareness for information security makes them usually the “weak link” for gaining access to enterprise networks and private information. From an attackers point of view the investment of using a human to hack a system is much cheaper than searching for 0-day exploits or unpatched vulnerabilities. That’s why the art of human hacking, called Social Engineering, has become an important threat factor for secure systems.

Welcome to our journey through the blockchain, since the emergence of Bitcoin, one of the most trending topics of the global digital village. After reading this blog post, you’ll have a basic understanding of the technology, a wide overview of future use cases and are able to differentiate between realistic potential and hype.

In the first part we explain the blockchain technology, for everybody who’s not that deep in the topic or needs a quick recap:
What is an transaction?
What’s inside a block?
How does the merkle tree work?
Why do we need a proof of work?

In the second part we take a closer look on the future of the blockchain:
What are Proof-of-Stake, Casper and Algorand?
What are the risks and opportunities of the technology?
Where are the future uses cases of the blockchain?
Is there a blockchain revolution or just another hype?Continue reading →